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encouraging ex-Christians
Rants and articles submitted by and for ex-Christians
By Dave, the WM
When it comes to ethical decisions and moral behavior,
What is right?
What is wrong?
What is good?
What is bad?
And, do we really need a god to tell us what these words mean?
Ethics and morals aren't exactly the same thing. However, in Christian circles the terms are usually used interchangeably. So, for the sake of this discussion, morality and ethical behavior will be considered synonymous.
When I was a Christian, innumerable sermons, messages, pamphlets, and books crossed my eyes and flooded my ears with the dogma of moral absolutism. God had decreed HIS Law. He had embedded it in the hearts and minds of men. HE had written it on tablets of stone. Those laws were foundational to family life. Those tablets were the cornerstones to ordered society. HIS absolute Law is the bedrock upon which all people must build their lives and homes.
Moral relativism, on the other hand, was fiercely denounced as a doctrine birthed in the pit of hell. This idea, if it ever gained wide-spread acceptance, would usher in an era of moral collapse and chaos. The very fabric of society would be rent in twain, and Satan himself would walk our streets.
OK, no one said Satan would walk our streets, but it was generally agreed that without the absolute moral authority of the Bible, the 10 Commandments, etc., the world might stop spinning in its orbit, or something. At the very least, violence and mayhem would be commonplace. A shadowy vision of a lawless, post-apocalyptic landscape would come to mind whenever relativism was mentioned.
I completely bought into that Christian viewpoint.
"Isn't it obvious?" I'd ask. "God Himself describes what is good. God is good. And sin is the transgression of the Law of God."
I was comfortable with this position because morality this simply defined was easy to understand. I knew right from wrong because God had given me some natural knowledge, His Word to confirm that inner knowledge, and bound it all together with the witness of His Spirit in my heart.
Who needs a philosophical education on ethics when you possess a mystical triumvirate of moral certitude?
Obviously I've abandoned that position now, but I didn't do it without a measure of fear and uncertainty. Because of my long programming, I wondered if it was possible to be moral without the restraining influences of a belief in God. What was to keep me from diving head-long into hedonism? What would keep me from devolving into a drunken glutton whose mantra would be "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"
Isn't being debauched what "True Infidelity™" is all about?
Now, several years later, without a belief in an afterlife or in a God who is waiting to punish me, I haven't appreciably changed my lifestyle. I still hold down a job, obey the speed limit, pay my taxes, love my family, deal honestly with others, am devotedly faithful to my wife, am not given to frequent outbursts of rage, regularly bathe, brush my teeth, and comb my hair.
In essence, there's been no significant change at all in my behavior. If anything, some of my behavior has improved: I'm less prone to harshly and narrowly judge my fellow human beings.
The thought of relativism scared me as a Christian. It scares many Christians because to admit that morals can change based on cultural, historical, familial, or other influences and norms, opens wide the door to possibilities such as that Hitler and Stalin couldn't be judged as any more immoral than my grandmother. In other words, if we have no Law Maker in the sky, how can anyone say that the things Hitler and Stalin did were bad?
Well?
Well, if we do have a Law Maker in the sky that says the things Hitler and Stalin did was bad, would that make they did bad?
What I mean is, is genocide and mass-murder bad because a so-called god says so, or is it bad for some other reason? If God said genocide and mass-murder were good, would it be OK to kill with impunity and without mercy?
Said another way, is what Hitler and Stalin did only bad because a god says so? Do we really need a god to tell us that these two guys were monsters?
Are things wrong because a god has decreed certain things bad, or are certain things inherently bad in and of themselves. If God commits genocide is it good? If God commands us to commit genocide, is it good? Whether or not God would ever ask such behavior of us is beside the point. To say that God's nature is good, and HE must obey His nature is also avoiding the question. If God commanded you to murder another human being, would God be commanding something good or something bad?
There are a couple of points here:
"Thou shalt not bear false witness..."
Lying is a sin. Lying is breaking the Law of God.
Yet, Corrie Ten Boom, the famous Christian author who wrote of her experiences during the Nazi occupation of Holland in WWII, hid Jewish people in her home. She repeatedly denied to the authorities that she was hiding anyone. Over and over, she lied.
Personally, I think she did the right thing. She did the morally right thing. But she still lied. She lied to protect the lives of others who would die if she told the truth. She made a morally relativistic decision.
What if you were a Christian, serving as a soldier in the United States army during WWII, and you were commanded to assassinate Hitler? Assassinating Hitler — would that be morally good or morally bad?
What if the command to kill Hitler came late in the war, after many millions of people had died?
What if the command to kill Hitler came early in the war, before hostilities broke out?
What if the command to kill Hitler came when Hitler was a child?
I betting that honest people attempting to answer those questions will admit that their answers changed depending on the way the question was phrased, depending on the circumstances described. While at one point, killing Hitler might seem like the morally right thing to do. Killing a child, even Hitler as a child, would give most people pause.
For me, when I began to realize that even in Christianity there are no moral absolutes, that moral decisions change and adjust with the circumstances, I started to break free of the fear that some sort of horrific moral chaos would overwhelm our world without bible-god.
If it were easy to determine right from wrong or good from bad, we wouldn't need so many laws, lawyers, and judges. If morality was something written in stone, slavery wouldn't have been tolerated throughout nearly 1,900 years of Christian history. We all know that slavery is wrong, don't we? Yet, not once in the entire Bible is the practice called wrong.
Here's something bold: Perhaps, in ancient times, slavery wasn't wrong! Perhaps it's only wrong now!
Christians want it both ways. They want to claim a hold on moral absolutes, but will defend things like slavery with moral relativistic rhetoric.
The reality is that there are no clear absolutes when it comes to morality. Does that mean that anything goes, so party on, dude? Does that mean Hitler and Stalin are, after all, no less moral than my grandmother?
No.
It's apparent that human beings have evolved with a need for socialization, for community, for family, for building tribes and cities and nations. We generally all want to live and be happy, and the best way to do that is to live together in peace. Were not that far from our Paleolithic roots, however, so we still have a long way to go. Shedding our primitive superstitious nonsense like so many worn out rags will be a good step in the right direction.
I no longer envision all humans with Christian pessimism. I do not think people are morally depraved demon fodder more fit for the fire than for anything else. I don't necessarily think all people are basically good, either. I think it all depends on the relative circumstances we find ourselves in.
In any event, morality is strictly a human affair.
To make comments, continue to PART II: Morality and ethics without absolutes, part II
"A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
"There is nothing divine about morality; it is a purely human affair."
— Albert Einstein
When it comes to ethical decisions and moral behavior,
What is right?
What is wrong?
What is good?
What is bad?
And, do we really need a god to tell us what these words mean?
Ethics and morals aren't exactly the same thing. However, in Christian circles the terms are usually used interchangeably. So, for the sake of this discussion, morality and ethical behavior will be considered synonymous.
When I was a Christian, innumerable sermons, messages, pamphlets, and books crossed my eyes and flooded my ears with the dogma of moral absolutism. God had decreed HIS Law. He had embedded it in the hearts and minds of men. HE had written it on tablets of stone. Those laws were foundational to family life. Those tablets were the cornerstones to ordered society. HIS absolute Law is the bedrock upon which all people must build their lives and homes.
Moral relativism, on the other hand, was fiercely denounced as a doctrine birthed in the pit of hell. This idea, if it ever gained wide-spread acceptance, would usher in an era of moral collapse and chaos. The very fabric of society would be rent in twain, and Satan himself would walk our streets.
OK, no one said Satan would walk our streets, but it was generally agreed that without the absolute moral authority of the Bible, the 10 Commandments, etc., the world might stop spinning in its orbit, or something. At the very least, violence and mayhem would be commonplace. A shadowy vision of a lawless, post-apocalyptic landscape would come to mind whenever relativism was mentioned.
I completely bought into that Christian viewpoint.
"Isn't it obvious?" I'd ask. "God Himself describes what is good. God is good. And sin is the transgression of the Law of God."
I was comfortable with this position because morality this simply defined was easy to understand. I knew right from wrong because God had given me some natural knowledge, His Word to confirm that inner knowledge, and bound it all together with the witness of His Spirit in my heart.
Who needs a philosophical education on ethics when you possess a mystical triumvirate of moral certitude?
Obviously I've abandoned that position now, but I didn't do it without a measure of fear and uncertainty. Because of my long programming, I wondered if it was possible to be moral without the restraining influences of a belief in God. What was to keep me from diving head-long into hedonism? What would keep me from devolving into a drunken glutton whose mantra would be "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"
Isn't being debauched what "True Infidelity™" is all about?
Now, several years later, without a belief in an afterlife or in a God who is waiting to punish me, I haven't appreciably changed my lifestyle. I still hold down a job, obey the speed limit, pay my taxes, love my family, deal honestly with others, am devotedly faithful to my wife, am not given to frequent outbursts of rage, regularly bathe, brush my teeth, and comb my hair.
In essence, there's been no significant change at all in my behavior. If anything, some of my behavior has improved: I'm less prone to harshly and narrowly judge my fellow human beings.
The thought of relativism scared me as a Christian. It scares many Christians because to admit that morals can change based on cultural, historical, familial, or other influences and norms, opens wide the door to possibilities such as that Hitler and Stalin couldn't be judged as any more immoral than my grandmother. In other words, if we have no Law Maker in the sky, how can anyone say that the things Hitler and Stalin did were bad?
Well?
Well, if we do have a Law Maker in the sky that says the things Hitler and Stalin did was bad, would that make they did bad?
What I mean is, is genocide and mass-murder bad because a so-called god says so, or is it bad for some other reason? If God said genocide and mass-murder were good, would it be OK to kill with impunity and without mercy?
Said another way, is what Hitler and Stalin did only bad because a god says so? Do we really need a god to tell us that these two guys were monsters?
Are things wrong because a god has decreed certain things bad, or are certain things inherently bad in and of themselves. If God commits genocide is it good? If God commands us to commit genocide, is it good? Whether or not God would ever ask such behavior of us is beside the point. To say that God's nature is good, and HE must obey His nature is also avoiding the question. If God commanded you to murder another human being, would God be commanding something good or something bad?
There are a couple of points here:
- Since God supposedly cannot perform evil acts or order evil acts, or call evil good or good evil, it suggests that He answers to a law of morality outside and above Himself. Clearly God cannot arbitrarily declare murder bad one day and good the next. Either murder is bad or it is not, right?
- Christianity is morally relativistic.
"Thou shalt not bear false witness..."
Lying is a sin. Lying is breaking the Law of God.
Yet, Corrie Ten Boom, the famous Christian author who wrote of her experiences during the Nazi occupation of Holland in WWII, hid Jewish people in her home. She repeatedly denied to the authorities that she was hiding anyone. Over and over, she lied.
Personally, I think she did the right thing. She did the morally right thing. But she still lied. She lied to protect the lives of others who would die if she told the truth. She made a morally relativistic decision.
What if you were a Christian, serving as a soldier in the United States army during WWII, and you were commanded to assassinate Hitler? Assassinating Hitler — would that be morally good or morally bad?
What if the command to kill Hitler came late in the war, after many millions of people had died?
What if the command to kill Hitler came early in the war, before hostilities broke out?
What if the command to kill Hitler came when Hitler was a child?
I betting that honest people attempting to answer those questions will admit that their answers changed depending on the way the question was phrased, depending on the circumstances described. While at one point, killing Hitler might seem like the morally right thing to do. Killing a child, even Hitler as a child, would give most people pause.
For me, when I began to realize that even in Christianity there are no moral absolutes, that moral decisions change and adjust with the circumstances, I started to break free of the fear that some sort of horrific moral chaos would overwhelm our world without bible-god.
If it were easy to determine right from wrong or good from bad, we wouldn't need so many laws, lawyers, and judges. If morality was something written in stone, slavery wouldn't have been tolerated throughout nearly 1,900 years of Christian history. We all know that slavery is wrong, don't we? Yet, not once in the entire Bible is the practice called wrong.
Here's something bold: Perhaps, in ancient times, slavery wasn't wrong! Perhaps it's only wrong now!
Christians want it both ways. They want to claim a hold on moral absolutes, but will defend things like slavery with moral relativistic rhetoric.
The reality is that there are no clear absolutes when it comes to morality. Does that mean that anything goes, so party on, dude? Does that mean Hitler and Stalin are, after all, no less moral than my grandmother?
No.
It's apparent that human beings have evolved with a need for socialization, for community, for family, for building tribes and cities and nations. We generally all want to live and be happy, and the best way to do that is to live together in peace. Were not that far from our Paleolithic roots, however, so we still have a long way to go. Shedding our primitive superstitious nonsense like so many worn out rags will be a good step in the right direction.
I no longer envision all humans with Christian pessimism. I do not think people are morally depraved demon fodder more fit for the fire than for anything else. I don't necessarily think all people are basically good, either. I think it all depends on the relative circumstances we find ourselves in.
In any event, morality is strictly a human affair.
To make comments, continue to PART II: Morality and ethics without absolutes, part II
"Christians want it both ways. They want to claim a hold on moral absolutes, but will defend things like slavery with moral relativistic rhetoric".
I respectfully disagree. I don't think that Christians want it both ways. The wanting-it-both-ways is just an epiphenomenon. That's only the way it manifests itself. It would be closer to the mark to say that they don't want it either way; although wanting it
both ways is the clearest way of presenting it in real time.
What they want is to reside in a different place in their consciousness from where freethinkers/secularists reside. They are using a whole different mode of thought. It's said, by social scientists in white lab-coats, that the Id cannot hear the word "not"; which is why experts in the field of sports psychology, and in self-affirmation generally, always encourage the subject/patient to think up a _positive_ script for themselves: "I stroke the ball smoothly and follow through," rather than "I don't make my usual mistake of taking my eye off the ball and slicing it into the rough."
When you want to go into faith-think, it's axiomatic that you must jump in with both feet. There's no other way. Otherwise, it's not faith, it's thought, or logic, etc.
That's why my respect for the true ex-Christians (I'm a never-wuzzer) just goes on and on. By definition, their apostasy must have been close to impossible, as evinced by the fact that so few have done it during this period when leaving the religion is NOT made easy for them. And yet, they did it.
Most Christians of my personal experience are like that cartoon where the guy is talking to his dog, Skippy. The human is standing there with his fetching stick in his hand, saying stuff like, "Now listen, Skippy; it's a bad little Skippy that just watches me throw the stick and hafta go get it again myself. Please, Skippy, this time I want you to be a clever little Skippy and do what Skippy's clever sister does, and run after the...etc."
The caption on the cartoon is: "What you say --- what he hears", because in the dog's
thought-balloon, the way it shows up is: "blah, blah, blah, Skippy....blah, blah, Skippy ...blah, blah, blah, blah, Skippy...blah, blah, Skippy...blah, blah, blah Skippy..."
There's no point in telling them that it's an example of cultural relativism to point out that it was okay when The Lawd told Moses & the gang to kill every man, woman, child and unit of livestock currently occupying the promised land, but not okay for Hitler to do it. All they really hear is: "blah, blah, The Lawd...blah, blah, blah, The Lawd ...blah, blah...The Lawd...etc."
I guess I both agree and disagree with your analysis. It's true, but to a person who has either acquiesced to, or plunged into, the ambient "faith", it is addressed to a part of the brain that has been effectively pithed.
People are now free to have some fun at any references to "stroking the ball", and True Ex-Christians[TM]...heh heh...
Would the statement "there are no moral absolutes" be an absolute?
How can you say that what Hitler was doing was wrong when you state that the measure of right and wrong is the peace of society? I am sure Hitler would argue that he was trying to bring about peace by conquering the world and destroying the Jews. How can you say that he was wrong in his assumption? Any answer you give must lead to an absolute for it to have any authority over Hitler and the Nazi's morality.
Is God good because he does what is good or because He is the essance of what is good? He is not obedient to an outside standard, he IS the standard. So, to answer your question in the most shocking of ways, Yes, if God commanded for me to kill someone, it would be morally right for me to do so. Does that make God evil or does that make Him...well, God, the supreme Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Can God do with His creation as He pleases? Is the command to wipe out a nation moral relativism or simply reckoning justice where there is no justice, as those nations overtly and systematically broke every moral code and every moral sensibility that any human might have by sacrificing children, ravaging border villages, and even practicing canabalism?
I would absolutely agree that Christians are no wiser than unbelievers at making moral decisions sometimes. It is much easier to believe in moral absolutism than to practice it, but to say that this invalidates the argument for moral absolutism would be to make the "argument against the person" fallacy of logic. I would also absolutely agree that "Christians" have even altogether ignored the commands of God to opt for doing that which was most beneficial for them, but, here again, this does not nullify or invalidate the argument.
The bottom line is that there must be moral absolutes. One cannot simply judge right from wrong based on familial or societal desires. What is "good" for society and family today might not be "good" tomorrow, but does then make yesterday evil? I believe, in your story of Corey Tin Boom, you left out the fact that her sister trusted in God's moral absolutes and told the truth to a German patrol, and the soldiers laughed at her and left the house without checking it. Kant would argue that it would not have been her that killed the Jews in her house, but rather the soldiers, and they, therefore, would have been morally wrong.
This may be rubbing salt on an old wound, but I pray right now that God will be faithful and restore your relationship with Him. You may be a moral man, but where is your foundation? I hope that Christ will be that foundation once again, someday.
If we need to call some thing bad we should be able to know what is good and bad. To know what is good and what is bad we need an absolute law that tells us what is good and what is bad. To have an absolute law we need an absolute law giver. That absolute law giver is God Himself who is transcendent above all of us. We cannot make human beings as the absolute law givers. If we do, who is that? Osama Bin Laden or Mahatma Gandhi? Mother Teresa or Hitler? We cannot put morality and ethics into the hands of men.
The atheists might presume that they are doing good things inspite of their absence of belief in the absolute God. Yet they do not have an objective basis for their good ness. Suppose that evolution trained us in the exactly opposite way - putting genes of hate, betrayal, dishonesty, deception each into our being without a trace of genes that make us love, help and honor people. Then our genocides will be completely rationalized because that is the way the evolution has trained us, after all. Thus, in evolutionary worldview you can do good things but there is no rationalization against doing bad things. In fact, the 'good' the atheists are boasting about is learnt from conscience and the Bible. The conscience tells us what is good and what is bad. THe conscience is not a product of evolution but a program inbuilt within us by GOd Himself.
The author also exhibited his ignorance by proclaiming that Christianity has condoned slavery. In fact, if we look back into history slavery was forbidden by Christians as early as eleventh century in Europe. But it later resurfaced as the Christian influence faded. However, at the height of slave trade, it was Christians who fought for abolition - William Wilberforce, a staunch Christian was behind bringing the Abolition laws into the British constitution, here in USA - people like Abe Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, F. Douglas, Martin Luther King Jr were staunch Christians and they repeatedly flipped through their Bibles to show the inhumanity of the slavery. Could you name at least one person who was atheist and anti-slavery at the same time? I mean among the great leaders who fought against slavery.
Why racism is wrong? Because God who created all humans equally exists. Otherwise, there is no reason for calling racism wrong.
I think you hit it right on the mark. Your "bla, bla, bla" cartoon analogy played out immediately in the very next comments.
I am sure Hitler would argue that he was trying to bring about peace by conquering the world and destroying the Jews.
Sure, Hitler may very well have thought that. However, a considerable portion of the rest of western society vehemently disagreed with his ultimate solution and his methods. That's why we don't live under Nazism right now. If the rest of society had agreed with his philosophy, we would all be fascists, and you would have been taught from early childhood that your way of life and your country was the best in the world. And you would undoubtedly believe it with all your mind, heart and soul.
Would the statement "there are no moral absolutes" be an absolute?
Yes. I didn't say there were no absolute statements. 1+1=2, absolutely. You need the qualifier in both parts of the sentence. You should have asked "Would the statement 'there are no moral absolutes' be a moral absolute?" Obviously, asked correctly the question is silly and answers itself.
Yes, if God commanded for me to kill someone, it would be morally right for me to do so.
That's scary. That is a terrifying admission. And I expect I'll see you on the front page of some newspaper in the future. There are crimes committed on a regular basis by people who believe they are obeying the voice of God. They frequently end up in mental wards. Be careful.
Nathan, I think you are probably talking about the vile so-called commands of God in the Old Testament to rape and murder and commit genocide as the righteous judgment of God. No doubt when parents were debased into eating their own children, that too was a good exercise of justice.
If that kind of justice had been practiced during WWII, all German citizens would have been systematically gassed and murdered and the entire nation of Japan nuked.
If you'd been born in the Middle Ages, you would have argued that the Crusades, ordered by God through the Church, was righteous, good and nothing less than another example of the good judgment of God.
The bottom line is that there must be moral absolutes. One cannot simply judge right from wrong based on familial or societal desires. What is "good" for society and family today might not be "good" tomorrow, but does then make yesterday evil?
But you just said, Nathan, that there are NO MORAL ABSOLUTES! Yes you did. You said that no matter what God commands, it is good. If He commands atrocities, it is good. If He commands genocide, it is good. If He commands you to murder, you will do it, and it is good!
If whatever God commands (rather, whatever you think it is that God is commanding) then there is no possible way of determining good from evil. There is no standard at all.
You've illustrated my point. Thanks.
Paul said: if we look back into history slavery was forbidden by Christians as early as eleventh century in Europe. But it later resurfaced as the Christian influence faded.
As early as that? Huh! It only took 1,100 years from Jesus' death to begin to think slavery was wrong. Amazing! Slaves throughout the Old Testament, slave in the New Testament, slaves for 1,100 more years. Then finally, a few people's ideas of right and wrong evolved to the point where slavery was beginning to emerge as immoral.
Sounds like an evolutionary, relativistic process was going on to me.
Paul, I've given you this link before on how Christians supported slavery, but you seem fairly closed off, and won't read anything. Oh well. Ignorance is bliss. The abolitionists did the right thing, but their interpretation of right and wrong was definitely not based on the Bible. They were introducing new, humanistic ideas, based on an evolutionary and relativistic principle. In other words, the world was changing the way it viewed Slavery.
Thus, in evolutionary worldview you can do good things but there is no rationalization against doing bad things.
There sure is good reasons for not doing bad things. It's called jail. It's called divorce. It's called not being liked. It's called social and peer-pressures to conform. It's called wanting to stay employed. It's called feeling good about yourself. It's called all kinds of things.
Paul, if you were to abandon your faith right now, today, do you honestly think you'd suddenly become some sort of unrestrained immoral monster? Are you really so filled with depraved cravings that only the check of a belief in a hell-fire-breathing god is what keep s you in line?
If so, that's sad.
Abe Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, F. Douglas, Martin Luther King Jr
Now you are ignorant. Lincoln was not a pious man and King Jr.'s spirituality was far from orthodox Christianity. I'm not familiar with Tubman's religion, but she was an abolitionist.
As far as racism goes, the Old Testament is full of racism, and it was approved. As long as the races being persecuted or wiped out weren't Hebrew, apparently that was good.
Also killing all the first born of the Egyptians was a literal Geno-cide (the murder of a generation)
In the case of the Dutch lady, God never said which Commandment was most important so:
Do you save someone who violates Commandment 1 (Jews don't have a Trintiarian God) against someone violating Commandment 6 (The Nazis were VERY good at that)by violating Commandment 9. If they're all equal, then it's relativism, if they're in Heirachy, then you're helping someone violate Commandment 1...
So, how does one choose?
Love
Grandpa
"Is God good because he does what is good or because He is the essance of what is good? He is not obedient to an outside standard, he IS the standard. So, to answer your question in the most shocking of ways, Yes, if God commanded for me to kill someone, it would be morally right for me to do so. Does that make God evil or does that make Him...well, God, the supreme Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Can God do with His creation as He pleases? Is the command to wipe out a nation moral relativism or simply reckoning justice where there is no justice, as those nations overtly and systematically broke every moral code and every moral sensibility that any human might have by sacrificing children, ravaging border villages, and even practicing canabalism?"
Dano here:
Nathan! You are:
# 1 Talking about God, as if you know one exists.
#2 Acting as if you can define the word God.
#3 Not making the truly courageous, moral, and honest decision to admit that you do not know the answer to #1, and #2.
Nathan! No one knows what God is. No one even knows if there is a God. The God of the bible is so much like a human tyrant, it seems fairly obvious that he was invented by men. The only MORAL thing to admit is You don't know what God is. The Pope doesn't know what God is. Billy graham doesn't, I don't, no one does, therefore it is impossible to talk about what it can or cannot do, morally or otherwise.
I seem to remember that you are in the religion business, so you have much invested in pretending that you know all about God. This will go right over your halo, but at least it may help some poor soul who might be tricked into thinking that you and Pat Robertson have some knowledge of God, that the rest us of don't.
Dan (Faith in unsubstantiated bullshit is not moral, it is cowardice)
(Sorry if I said the same things as anyone else. I haven't read any comments after Nathan's yet!)
Abolition was a call by atheists long before the church was forced to succumb by the political rule in the U.S.
-Slavery abolished in France 1791 by atheistic founders of the revolution.
Early in the U.S. history
-Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
-George Washington (1732-1799)
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
-John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)
All either deist or Atheist, but definitely atheist towards the belief in a personal Christian god.
-Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) - Deist
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), a Unitarian minister turned atheist
-William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), an atheist
Back in England... the abolition of slavery was pioneered by;
-Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
-John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Both Atheists. The question becomes who were the atheists fighting, and the answer would be a resounding - "Christians" or "religious folk" who were still hugging their bibles and declaring that their "state rights" gave them the privilege to do whatever they wanted. Hence, the civil war was more about the war against independent states and how they believed they should be individually governed. Slavery just happened to be a dominant practice in the southern states that drove many from the north to question the validity of a nation, which had no national unity in terms of law.
Yes. I didn't say there were no absolute statements. 1+1=2, absolutely. You need the qualifier in both parts of the sentence. You should have asked "Would the statement 'there are no moral absolutes' be a moral absolute?" Obviously, asked correctly the question is silly and answers itself.
You make a good point; I did leave out a qualifier. I guess I don’t understand how the question is silly. To say that there are no moral absolutes and one should judge right and wrong on social trends is to state a moral absolute, specifically: It is morally right to do what society deems as right. Or, what society deems right is morally right. This is either always true or not true at all. Isn’t that what we are debating here, whether it is morally right to do the will of society or to do the will of God?
Yes, if God commanded for me to kill someone, it would be morally right for me to do so.
That's scary. That is a terrifying admission. And I expect I'll see you on the front page of some newspaper in the future. There are crimes committed on a regular basis by people who believe they are obeying the voice of God. They frequently end up in mental wards. Be careful.
I don’t think you have anything to be afraid of. For one, God has a specific method by which he reveals his will, namely the Bible. And, in biblical times, he chose to reveal his truth through certain men and women, and particularly in the person of Jesus Christ. If I had a voice in my head (which I do not) telling me to kill someone, I would seriously doubt that command since God’s revealed will (the Bible) tells me that I should not. But, I had to answer a Hyperbolic question with a Hyperbolic answer. God reveals himself to me through His Word. This is the standard that God has given us.
Nathan, I think you are probably talking about the vile so-called commands of God in the Old Testament to rape and murder and commit genocide as the righteous judgment of God. No doubt when parents were debased into eating their own children, that too was a good exercise of justice.
If that kind of justice had been practiced during WWII, all German citizens would have been systematically gassed and murdered and the entire nation of Japan nuked.
First of all, you need to get your facts straight on what God commanded. God did not command rape. He also commanded that wars fought outside of the land of Canaan were to be fought on terms very similar to the all-wise Geneva Convention, i.e. only soldiers were to be killed. In fact, in these cases, Israel was only to defeat the enemy and not destroy and loot. I believe you still missed the point that God can do with his creation as he pleases. The supreme being of the universe who created all things can do with his created things and command of his created things what he wishes. I am a computer engineer who is fascinated with AI. If I were to create rational agents, I would have a right to do with them as I please. I could command that they not harm one another, but does that make it wrong for me to destroy one or even use one agent to destroy another. At the same time, it would be wrong for one agent to act on his own and harm another agent. This, obviously, is a weak analogy, but it is the closest one I got.
As for the reference to “parents eating their children”, I believe you are referring to the Roman siege of Jerusalem, in which case God neither commanded Rome to attack Jerusalem or did He command parents to eat their children.
But you just said, Nathan, that there are NO MORAL ABSOLUTES! Yes you did. You said that no matter what God commands, it is good. If He commands atrocities, it is good. If He commands genocide, it is good. If He commands you to murder, you will do it, and it is good!
If whatever God commands (rather, whatever you think it is that God is commanding) then there is no possible way of determining good from evil. There is no standard at all.
God is absolute. He does not change. For God to command that justice be done on a nation is right and good. For God to command that I not act on my own desires and commit murder is right and good. His commands do not conflict because He acts rightly in each situation. What he does in each situation is the right thing to do, and I can know from what He has said in His Word what is right and good to do.
To Dano…
Yes, I work part-time for a church as a youth minister, but my full-time job is as a computer engineer developing firmware and software for multimedia devices. I don’t need the part-time job, I just believe that God has gifted me with talents to use in my church. Problem is, this is another “argument against the person” fallacy. I would not argue that one should not listen to a Professor of Philosophy or believe what he teaches because he gets paid to propagate such beliefs and it is in his best interest to do so. I must argue that his beliefs are valid or invalid based on their merits.
I am talking about God as if I know one exists in the same way that you talk about him as if he does not exist. Neither of us KNOW for sure, although I can see evidences of his existence. I talk about God as if I know he exists in the same way I would talk about an atom existing. I have never seen an atom, but I believe it exists because I see its effects. I have never seen your brain, but I believe it exists because I see the effect of it. I don’t really even know that you exist (I could just be talking to an AliceBot) but I believe you exist because I see the effects of you.
I don’t define God or the word. God defines himself, and he has stated that he is the supreme being of the universe and the creator of the world. If the God of the Bible is a supreme being, you would have to admit that He sees way more than we do, and if so, He is the only one who can judge, ultimately, whether his actions in the Bible were just or unjust. As a teenager, I thought a lot of the things that my parents did and made me do were “not fair”, and then I got older and wised up and realized that they knew a lot more about the circumstances than I did. We don’t know what God knows. We don’t know what God knew about the Amalekites or the Moabites, and therefore we are in no place to judge his actions or commands.
Upon what do you base this statement?
All you need for you to know what is good and what is bad is an imagination, empathy and the ability to weigh alternative ideas.
You are presupposing that a universal right and a universal wrong must exist but there is no need for this to be true. But even if it were, so what?
If god is the essense of what is morally good then the only way for you to know what is morally right is for you to know the mind of god - not just the all-too-easily misinterpreted words of the bible. But nobody can know the mind of god, so nobody can know what absolute good is. All we can know is our own personal perspective of what seems right to us.
You seem to suspect this, otherwise you wouldn't bring up the existance of the conscience. But if the conscience is an "inbuilt program" given to us by god, then there wouldn't be any debates over abortion or capital punishment or suicide bombings. We would all have a shared perspective on whether these things were right or wrong. But the world abounds in differing opinions.
You need for there to be an absolute good in order for your god to exist, not the other way around.
So they were 'all evil'... like the first born Egyptians were 'all evil'. The son of some peasant farmer Egyptian was just asking for God to off him?
Seems you have to spend a lot of time making up pretty stories to try and justify following a bloody handed demon you claim (based only on his own assertion) that he's Good.
Good is a fashion that one wears for a while. Once it was good to own slaves, once it was good to kill a Caananite or Midiante on site, once it was good to sell your daughter into slavery for a 'fair price', once it was good to stone adulterers and wear tassels and burn offerings... Once it was good to kill all the males and women over the age of 40 and all the women who weren't virgins and to take by force the women who were virgins.
The God who killed Onan's Brother, then Onan, the God who killed the people for making the wrong sort of fire in the Holy of Holies... the one who's middle name was Arbitrary Bag of Pus...
Quite how someone with better than middle school reading and comprehension and an IQ into double figures can actually beleive this stuff is 'good' is beyond me.
Love and hugs
Grandpa
Love
GH
But I think it is not that complicated. Humans are social animals - we have a natural tendency to seek the benefit of the group as well as our own.
So I propose the following:
Whatever benefits humans, both in the short and the long run, is good.
Whatever harms human beings, both in the short and the long run, is evil.
In what category falls the belief in a god?
As always, Paul and Nathan manage to demonstrate with painful clarity how religion is similar to a drug addiction: in the end, all needs and ends are submitted to the need for the drug.
Christ brings peace. Christ said "I have come that they might have abundant life." He also said, "If you abide in me, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." Freedom from the bondage of sin, freedom from the bondage of my self-distructiveness. Yes, I am addicted to Christ. Isn't that what we are all seeking, something to serve, something that will give life purpose? To use CS Lewis' argument, why would we need to find purpose if there is no purpose in life? You cannot know what does not exist. You are seeking to find purpose by depending on your own intellect and the wisdom of men. Man is your god. I find purpose by understanding that an all-powerful God created me to "glorify him and love him forever." But, we both are seeking a fix, a drug, a god.
Anyway, hey, thanks for letting me put in my two cents. I've got assignments from my wife that I have to get done or she will be dealing out some justice of her own. I have enjoyed debating. I will check back in and see how well you guys have torn me apart. Later.
Nathan
I think you bring up some excellent points. However, I also get the feeling that even after all your years of study, you missed some crucial points of Christianity.
The law says "You must not do this or else." For instance, murder is wrong. This is absolute. But as you pointed out, if it is wrong, then how can anyone bring justice? It would be equally wrong to kill Hitler as it would anyone else. Murder is murder. Only someone above the law, greater than the law, could execute such a punishment.
Obviously, God created the law and is above it. If God should decided to judge a person for murder, and then sentence them to death, He is justified. He is above the law.
Justice says, "an eye for an eye." According to justice, the law must be upheld and obeyed. Justice is what makes the law absolute. The law says do not speed. If a person speeds, they should be punished. The punishment is a fine. Would it be fair if any person who was speeding was suddenly let off? No. Justice must be served. A punishment must be given. You cannot simply let one person off without cause. "An eye for an eye."
The bible says, "If you live by the law, you will die by the law."
In your example of religion, you speak about moral absolutism. If a person lives by moral absolutism, then they must obey it. If a person lives by the law, then they must obey the law. If the law says do not lie, then we cannot lie in any instance. The law is absolute. Likewise, the bible says that if we live by the law, we will die by the law. We will be judged by it. If we live by absolute moralism, then we will also be judged by it. Who then could possibly live? We would all die. No person is capable of living up to absolute moralism. We would be stuck the minute our parents asked us to lie. Should we honor our parents or not lie?
God created the law, and God must be the one to keep it. If God is the creator of the law, it means that God is also the one who can judge by it. The standard of the law is established by God.
For instance, you are the father of your children. You set down the laws of your household. You also uphold them. Let's say you tell your children they are not allowed to eat sugar. Period. You are against sugar. Well, as it turns out a friend comes over that is diabetic. She starts having an attack and needs sugar. However, you children who love you say, "No we can't, Dad said no sugar." Well, the reason you said no sugar was for their own health. It is bad in large doses. However, it was not meant to be absolute. However, what should they do? Should they obey you or not? If they decide to disobey you in this instance, and rely on their own understanding, then they can justify this in every instance. However, if they do obey, they will bring harm to another. What should they do?
When Jesus came to earth, the Pharisees believed in absolute moralism. They were religious. However, Jesus who was God was above the law. I am sure you know the incident. Jesus performed a miracle on the Sabbath. The law said "no work on the Sabbath." Yet, here was Jesus healing people on the Sabbath. What was His response? He said, "I am master even of the Sabbath." He is the father of the household.
In another instance Jesus highlights this fact as well: all the laws are based upon love. They were not meant to be used for selfishness. Jesus did not transgress the law, because the law was based upon love. And it was not wrong for Jesus to love on the Sabbath even though it involved work.
It is true that God must be obeyed. God had decreed his law, as you said. This law must be obeyed. God is greater than us. If we should disobey the law of God, we have sinned. If a person commits a wrong against another person, they must answer to the law of the government. They are punished according to their crime. "An eye for an eye." All things are measured in fairness. When a person commits a sin against God, however, they have wronged an eternal and infinite being. Thus, if you commit a sin against God, you should get an "an eye for an eye." This would mean your punishment will be eternal torture. Ouch. Better not commit a sin against God.
Yet, the very first commandment of the law says what? "You shall have no other Gods before me." Quite obviously, what God is saying here is that He is to be first and foremost in our lives. We cannot have any other God before Him. Also, this is a matter of the heart. We are to worship God first and foremost. As Jesus would later say, "Love God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul." The first commandment, the greatest commandment is to love God.
Obviously, love is a choice. It is something we give. We give our love to people. We love our children because we give them our love. When we are born, however, as you have pointed out in another post, we are born with no knowledge. We have to learn about God. So, how can we possibly live up to this law? How can we love God when we don't even know Him? It is impossible. We are born separated from God. How can we love Him?
So, basically, at this point, we are all doomed. There is no hope. From the time we are born, we are all doomed to hell. We are born into sin.
This is all true, and God knows it. He knew it in the garden before He created Adam and Eve. In fact, this is all part of His plan. What? How does that make any sense? Let me explain.
God is completely fair and just. In addition, He created humanity for a greater purpose. We were created to love God. But love is something we must be free to give.
When God created Adam and Eve, they were not complete or perfect beings. They were missing something. In the garden, they had everything they could want. It was paradise. However, there were also two trees. One was the tree of life, the other was a tree of knowledge. God's desire was that they would eat from the tree of life. Then, they would be transformed into spiritual beings and live forever with God. However, He knew they would not. He warned them, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."
Here is the real boggling question....of all the trees, why didn't they eat from the tree of life? Why? Why did they choose this other tree? They were warned. Why do we still do this today? Why do we choose the tree of death?
God knew this would happen. When it did, they were instantly changed. They became tied to earth. They lost all contact with God. We are born separated from God. We live in flesh. We cannot sense God or spiritual things with any of our five sense. Here we are. We are stuck on earth. Blah. We have 120 years at most to live. That's it.
Death was not a punishment. Death was a consequence. God warned of the consequences. We were grounded. God was completely fair.
However, God has given us some time on earth to live. At first, it was no more than 1000 years. But thanks to a bunch of people during Noah's day, we have been cut back to 120 years. Who has ever lived past 120? Name one person.
Death is the consequence of sin. Hell is the punishment for sin. We have yet to recieve this judgment. This comes much later. God is holding back judgment for a time. This is all part of His plan. He wants to give us an opportunity to be forgiven.
In the garden, we could choose life or death. We chose death. Why? We are stupid. We are idiots. We do this all the time. It is echoed in our lives. Why do people smoke? It causes death. Why do people kill one another? Why do we hurt one another? Why can't we all just be good people?
God's plan from the beginning was to give us eternal life. However, we messed up. God is merciful though. He knew this would happen. Long before we were created, He made plans to make a way. He made plans for our salvation. This all ties into His Son. His beautiful Son.
Quote: "Since God supposedly cannot perform evil acts or order evil acts, or call evil good or good evil, it suggests that He answers to a law of morality outside and above Himself."
This is true. And yet, God is greater than morality. How can this be?
God is above all things and greater than all things. He is above good and evil. He is outside of good and evil. Before God could create anything, first He had to establish the law. This website is written in HTML code. That code tells the browser what to do so that we can read it. This code is governed by World Wide Web Consortium in order to maintain consistency. If everyone started writing their own code, we would have no standards. With no standards, everything would be random, and thus, we could not have websites or the internet. Imagine if every website had a different code and browser. Whoa!
So, before God could create anything, He had to establish two things: 1) the laws that govern it, 2) the authority to maintain it. In essence, God had to establish 1) Himself and 2) His throne. How did God do this?
God gave birth to a Son. The Son is one with the Father. He does whatever the Father tells Him. He is the person of the Father. The Son represents all that the Father is. As it says in Hebrews, He is the "the exact representation of his being." Additionally, the Son is the King. Or as Jesus said, "God has given me all authority over heaven and earth." He is the authority.
Imagine for a second. God is greater than all things. He is infinite. He is supreme. This means that God greater than images, forms, shapes, space, and time. So, how could this supreme being ever interact with our space and time? In the very beginning, He gave birth to a Son. This Son is the image of God. This Son is the shape of God.
This mean if we want to know God, see God, or experience God, the only way we can do this is though this image, God's Son.
God only had one child, one Son, who represents Him fully. The Son is God. The Father and Son are one. The Father is outside time and space, whereas the Son is in time and space. Make sense? This means that the Father is God and the Son is God. They are one being.
The Son of God is a person. He has an identity. He is good. He is righteous. He is the creator. He is the nature of God.
Of course, this is all really hard to believe. God knows this. We are little ants down here on earth. We cannot understand God or His greatness. How should we ever believe such a thing?
Well, God would love to show us Himself, but see, there is this little problem that we spoke about above. We are all doomed. We have sinned against God. We have wronged Him. We are creatures who have not fullfilled our purpose of loving God. We need help.
In your testimony, you tell a long story of how you tried to live up to the law. You tried to be your best for God. That is great and all, but in the end you failed. The final conclusion you draw in all this is that God must not exist. But maybe that is not the right conclusion. Maybe God does exist, and you did fail. But maybe this time, you should stop trying to live up to the law.
Many people live by the law. Christinaity seems to promote this religiousity. You have sinned against God. God has forgiven you. Now be a good person and do what the bible says. Whoa? Who could possibly do all the bible says? Who could possibly live up to Jesus demands? Why should we feel guilty over a little masterbation? Who is it hurting? We are all basically good people, are we not?
It seems on the surface that if we don't believe in God, that we would become a mass murdered. However, the are hundreds of athiests out there who live what appears to be a basically good life, and so many Christians, who don't. What is going on? Why is it like this?
Any semi-intelligent person can see how their actions affect other people. We can see that stealing will only hurt us in the long run. There is no doubt about that. However, this is not the core problem we face.
The real problem we face is a spiritual one. We are going to die. And then, we will have to face God and give account for our life. The real question is not how many people we hurt on earth. "An eye for an eye." The big question is have we sinned against God? If we have, then we are in danger of hell. So, a person on earth could live an entire life as a good person. They could have done amazing and wonderful things. And yet, still be doomed to Hell. It all depends on their relationship with God.
As stated above, we are all doomed to Hell. We are born separated from God. We are born athiests in a sense. We don't know God, how can we love Him? How can we know God? How can we be reconciled of this problem?
This is where Jesus and the law comes into play. Firstly, God gave the ten commandments not to control people, but to show that this spiritual problem exists. When we try to obey the law in full, we fail. We fail and fail and fail. God knows we will fail. He knows we will sin. He allows sin and evil to exist in order to show us this. He is trying to show us that we have a problem. God isn't worried that we die. He can raise us. He is not worried that we suffer. He is hoping we will learn from it. He is worried that we will end up in Hell. He doesn't want that. He is trying to reconcile this problem.
Of course, most people say, "Why can't God just do away with Hell?" It just wouldn't be fair to anyone if He did. God is just. His justice is absolute. He stands by His Word. He does not change. If God just threw away Hell, then justice would crumble.
Not to mention, if God allows people to go about freely sinning against Him, then all of existence would cease. Everything is based upon God. It all depends on Him. Anything that sins against God is at war with Him. If God allowed people to go about sinning against Him, there would be eternal war and conflict. There would be no goodness or peace.
Instead, God has a different plan. Humanity is stuck in a terrible situation. We are at odds with our maker. We are at war with God. We don't realize this in our daily lives. Many people have kind of accepted 100 or so years on earth as enough. I'll just make the best of what I have. Then I will die. However, in those selected years, God is giving us a chance to be reconciled.
In the beginning, we had a relationship with God. Adam and Eve talked with God, and walked with God. They hung out with Him. Imagine how cool that would be. But they messed up. Because of this, we are now an enemy of God. Our once good friend has now become our greatest threat.
We need help. We do not love God or obey Him. Rather we do our own thing and cause harm with eternal implications.
The Son of God, who is God, came down from Heaven and was born as a human being. Isn't that incredible. In Heaven, He is the King. He is glorious and in control of everything. But He came to earth to live as a man. On earth, he is limited. He must eat and breath. He must feel pain just as we feel pain. He can bleed and die.
Jesus Christ came to earth for one purpose. He would reconcile this issue of sin. He would give His life willing as a ransom. Justice says, "an eye for an eye." Jesus gave His life. Justice was satisfied. Justice was done. The punishment for sin was paid.
Jesus died on the cross. He was able to go about performing miracles, healing people, and raising people from the dead. But on the cross, he did not fight. They hung Him there and He suffered. He accepted this suffering. He did this as a gift, an offering of love. He willingly died. It was finished. He gave His life.
Since Christ was without sin, death could not hold Him. Three days later, He raised Himself from the dead. He came back. However, He came back a new person. He was a new creation.
Because of this, Christ earned the right to be Lord and judge. He was the Son of God before, but now, He was proven. People continually say, "I want proof." God gave us proof. The proof is Jesus Christ. Can anyone say anything against Him? The bible is not proof. The bible is a book. Jesus Christ is the risen Savior. He is alive.
I think you know what I am going to say next. Anyone who believe in Jesus saved. However, I don't think many people know what this means.
Many people confuse belief. There is a big difference between believing God exists and believing in God. Believing God exists doesn't help anyone or change anyone. Every religion believe God exists. To BELIEVE IN God means that you give up everything to Him. It means you trust Him.
To believe in Jesus Christ means that you think He is God and Lord, and you are lesser. It means you allow Him to reign over your life. He is King. He is your Father. This means you worship Jesus, pray to Jesus, and give everything to Jesus including your best and worst.
When we live under the law, we try and try to please God. We try to be a "good" religious person. When we live under Jesus, we stop trying. We don't try to be a good person. We pray to Jesus and say, "I can't be a godly person. You do it for me. Help me."
This means that if we sin after this point, that Jesus allowed. If we give everything to Jesus, then we don't worry about anything. We just let Jesus be God over us. We become the creature and He becomes the creator. We live in harmony with God.
So many people fall down on their knees and pray to Jesus. They experience a "spiritual" high. Well, that is great and all, but have you given yourself to Jesus?
The difference is that many Christians go out and get "saved." They then start to live by the law again. They try to be "good" Christians, and become very religious. They base their faith on either the bible, or the Church. Their faith is based upon their own opinion. Usually, a person who is like this becomes closed minded and prideful. They become a Pharisee.
True christianity isn't about having "good" behavior. It isn't about being right or any such thing. It is all about Jesus. I am not a perfect person. I know this. I make tons of mistakes. I sin and commit sins. However, Jesus is with me. He has saved me. He works in my life.
I am learning on a daily basis the truth of His every word. I don't worry about what I do or where my life is going. All I do is keep focused on Him and believe that He is in control of my life. He is my Lord. And I will tell you story after story, testimony after testimony, of God working in my life.
If you really want to know God:
1) Stop trying to be a "Christian" or a "good" person or a "religious" person. Stop trying to please God. Give up. Admit you are a sinner, a creature, a human being. What this means is you need to humble yourself. Too often people come to God in pride expecting Him to do things their way. Ha! Can you imagine if your computer suddenly started telling you what to do? We need to recognize the greatness of God. This requires a leap of faith. In a world filled with sin and pain, it takes a great leap of faith to believe God is good and greater than we are.
When a person has been humbled, they let go of all their own opinions. They become open to God. God cannot come and reveal the truth to someone, unless they are willing to listen. God cannot reveal Himself to a person that refuses to believe.
2) Offer yourself to Jesus Christ in prayer. "I am yours, take me." Once you have done this in truth, then Christ will take you. And He will shape and mold you. He will keep you.
As a final note:
I can understand why people reject religion. It is quite obvious the evils that have prevailed through it. But why would anyone reject God?
Blake
How so? Is morality the same in all people or is it different? How should societal morality be determined?
This website is possible because of the HTML code. This code is standardized. Morality needs to be standardized globally to be effective. How or who then should determine what everyone should believe is right or wrong?
Blake
And if my kids do eat sugar, against my will, then I guess I have the right to torture them forever in hell?
You speak of justice. What kind of justice demands everlasting horrific punishment for temporal offenses? The punishment should fit the crime, should it not? Yet, the punishment for non-belief, or believing in the wrong religion, or believing in the wrong version of the correct religion, is everlasting torment. What kind of perverse vision of justice is this?
Sorry, Blake, what you said just makes no sense.
Now, you think that without an absolute ruler, you will immediately become a debased pervert? Is that what you are saying? Do you mean to tell me that the only thing that keeps you from a living a depraved life is the threat of eternal damnation?
If so, that's very sad.
Anonymous, comparing HTML to morality is stupid.
Morality has to do with people living together. It has nothing to do with anything else. It does not have to do with the stars in their orbits, with chemical reactions, with math problems, with cell mitosis... it is strictly a human affair. Without humans, the concept of morality doesn't exist.
Yes He did: Numbers 31:15, 17, 18. "And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? (17) Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. (18) But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."
Nathan said:As for the reference to “parents eating their children”, I believe you are referring to the Roman siege of Jerusalem,
No, I’m referring to Jeremiah 19:9 where God says He will make parents eat their own children.
Nathan said: God is absolute. He does not change.
Of course we are presupposing that there even is a God, but let’s see if this god changes or not.
If we look at Genesis 6:6-7 we read: The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air – for I am grieved that I have made them.” [NIV]
So apparently God DID change His mind – and that change of mind led to the Great Flood.
If we look at the story of the Golden Calf in Exodus 32 we read that God was so unhappy with his ‘stiff necked people’ that, in verse10, the Lord said to Moses:
“Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” [NIV]
But Moses pleaded for his people and finally God said to Moses (v14):
Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.[NIV]
That’s just two. There are dozens and dozens of cases where God changes his mind.
I wonder, Nathan, is slavery right or wrong? Do you know?
(*God! ...When I use the term I KNOW in the following, I actually mean I HOPE!*)
If you exist, I know I am your son. I know you created me as well as everything else in the universe. I know you would not have made one of my sisters pregnant so you could have a half mortal son. I know you are too good, to arrange to have that half human creature be murdered in a pagan blood sacrifice to yourself, to appease yourself. I know that whatever we are, and whatever we do, you are responsible.
I know you would not expect us to believe everything we read, just because one of us says that it was you who wrote it. I know that if you wanted to give us an instruction manual, you would have no trouble writing a better piece of literature than the Christian bible. I know that you would not expect us to take that collection of oral and written stories put together by a Roman emperor, seventeen hundred years ago when men believed the earth was flat and the sound of thunder was in fact you speaking, and buy it lock, stock, and barrel
I know that, if you exist that you are perfect and don't need our love, or praise. I know you don't care how we have sex, or what we wear on or heads. I know that you would not make me suffer for someone else's mistakes as well as I know no one else can pay for mine. I know that if you wanted me to be different from what I am, you would simply snap your fingers and make me different!
I know that we have portrayed you with all of the same character flaws that we have, and I apologize for my fellow man. We had to make you jealous, vindictive, racist, and horribly cruel and without compassion, all we had for a model was ourselves.
Thanking you in advance,
Dan (?)
Here's the question you asked, phrased correctly: "Would the statement 'there are no moral absolutes' be a moral absolute?"
The answer, of course, is no. That statement is simply a sentence expressing an opinion about the existence of moral absolutes. Opinions about the existence of things are neither moral nor immoral. Morals have to do with human behavior, not statements of whether or not morals absolutely exist or not. That's why the question is silly.
When I was a Christian preachers would love to say "The statement that there are no absolute morals is an absolute statement! AHA!"
But, as you can see, that is an incomplete statement, basically comparing apples with oranges. There are plenty of absolutes in the world, but when it comes to morals, they shift with the times and the circumstances, and their parameters of acceptability are decided by society. Wearing a bikini at the beach would have landed a young lady in jail, and shammed her family, in the 1800s. Men wearing Speedos would have been considered depraved back then -- a heinous sin. It is clear from history and even in Christian practice that morals are not absolutely absolute.
Do you understand now?
Yes, I understand and apologize. I suppose it was a terribly insufficient attempt to adapt a rather good argument with regards to the issue of absolute truth: "The statement that there are no absolutes is an absolute." You've had me thinking about this all day and I think the primary issue that I disagree with and I would think most Christians would disagree with is the basis for morality. Yes, I would agree that morality is situational. In other words, certain moral laws are more important or more urgent that others, and therefore, when faced with a moral delimma one should seek the most moral action. Yes, I do agree that, even with the knowledge that God has given us, it is hard to know and not always clear what is right. I think the real issue is whether morality is determined by the practice of society or by a Law Giver. My argument is, if morality is societal, then there is no standard for judgment between societies. I understand that you made the argument that Hitler was wrong because most societies agreed he was wrong. What if most societies had not voted that way, would that make it right for him to exterminate the Jews? Or, to use your own example, was slavery right for the thousands of years that it was practiced but now wrong, or was it always wrong because a law giver said "Consider yourselves lower than your neighbor" and "love your neighbor as yourself"? And, there you have my answer to your question about slavery. God established principles by which we should live: "Love your God", "love your neighbor", etc. Jesus said all of the commandments hinge on these two. In other words, you should know to do the others because of these two. If you love your neighbor you will not kill him. Also, just because the Bible records an event or an action does not mean that God thinks it is right. God said love your neighbor, I would think he would then consider slavery to be wrong.
To be honest, some of the passages you bring up stump me. I don't know why God said kill everyone in the land of Canaan. Perhaps he could see what those people would become if they hadn't, much like your question of killing baby Hitler. Sometimes, I just don't understand God, but does that mean he isn't there? Sometimes I don't understand why my wife does things that seem to be outside of her nature, but does that mean she ceases to exist? Maybe I just don't understand enough about her. The point I made about God being above us applies here. Maybe we don't understand why God does certain things because we are not God. I don't know, but that doesn't change my belief in God. In fact, it makes me want to search and understand him more.
I appreciate you being patient with me and explaining why my statement was silly. I am certainly not gifted at philisophical rethoric. The irony of all this is that I came across this site while searching for a quote by John Calvin to use in my Sunday School lesson. I suppose an atheist would say that was coencidence. I would call it providence. If nothing else, at least I have been challenged and strengthened. Thanks for your patience with me. I will check back in from time to time to see what the Athiest Bloc thinks.
Your argument is a magnificent exercise in creative gibberish.
viz. "The person who made the law is above it."
No.
You want to make it so that your proposed creator has ALL power, but NO responsibility.
So... you want to argue that the creator has no responsibility towards its creation?
I know, of course, why you argue this, because it is a classical argument a postiori. It is a sort of reverse sour grapes. You want to believe something that is untenable, so you have to make up a way to make it acceptable after all.
You are a diseased and despicable creature, and I feel both pity and disgust. Until you find the moral (sic) courage to admit that Biblegod is not portrayed as good, and that no amount of spin can make him good, you will not be sable to start your journey to sanity.
Judgment by whom? By you? By me? The only moral judgments we need to make are the ones that directly effect us and the decisions that we make. And our judgments are no more or less valid than anybody else's.
Is it god's judgment you are referring to? Well, if he existed, he certainly would be in a position to have an absolutely correct moral perspective. But he would also certainly be aware that we could not possibly know or even comprehend this perspective. And it would be ridiculous of him to expect us to recognize it for what it is.
Living together in peace and harmony does not happen by first deciding on and agreeing to a set of absolute moral laws - because eventually someone is going to disagree about something. (As the last two thousand years of western history have proven.) Peace and harmony come from tolerance, acceptance and cooperation.
Your wife is not a good comparison to an invisible, immaterial, silent god.
I'm sure you can see, smell, hear, taste and touch your wife. The only place you can experience your god is in your imagination.
However, this imaginary god of yours condoned slavery: "And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money [property]." — Hebrew Scriptures, Exodus 21:20-21.
I'm afraid God thought slavery was A-O-K! He didn't just 'allow' it, he made sure there were well defined laws on it, so it would be done correctly. So, by your way of thinking, slavery was right then and it is right now. People are now calling slavery evil, so they are calling something good, i.e., slavery, evil. It might be the general apostasy of these modern atheistic times that have thrown mud on the righteous practice of owning human beings as property.
Here's a a link to a sermon preached on slavery just prior to the American Civil War: Mutual Relation of Masters and Slaves.
When Hitler ran Germany, all those good German Lutherans went right along with gassing the Jews. In fact, during that time period, most of Europe generally agreed that there was a big "Jewish problem."
Do I think that was right? NO. However, if Hitler had won the war, and we now lived under fascist tyranny, I would have been brought up believing that those prevailing policies and beliefs are superior to every other imaginable. It is quite likely that because of that upbringing you and I would have different opinions on the relative morality of dealing with the "Jewish problem" than we do today.
Let me ask you this: Was it morally right and good to drop the H-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII, and thereby killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, or was it bad and evil?
Let's have no more of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting Nathan's wife, from here on. You never know where that sort of thing may lead.
On the god question, though, particularly the incarnated Jesus figure, we are faced with the tricky matter of just how big a sacrifice god put himself to. Presumably, god is infinite (and eternal too! Same price.) What sacrifice is possible to an infinite set? "...If he needs a third eye, he just grows it...", like the feller said. Near as I can reckon, neither the Jesus figure nor the god figure sacrificed anything. This is always the difficulty when talking about infinite things.
One of the things that pops into my mind from time to time these days is to wonder just how big an improvement it was to develop a Single-God idea, after eons of Many-Gods schemes of the pagans. Kurt Godel, in the 1930s, proved that (I'm paraphrasing here, probably badly) in any formal system with enough parts to it to deserve the name of system, there
will be true statements in the system that can't be proved by the system, and that there will be statements whose truth or falsity can't be determined by the same system capable of expressing them.
And it occurs to me that monotheism, being a system, falls prey to that same type of
structural impossibility. At least in Many-God systems, which are many-systems Systems, if you run into a paradox within one of the gods' province [set of axioms], it can be
comprehended/resolved by one of the other gods/set-of-axioms. Or stands a chance of it, anyway. But with the Jesus/Gawd mishmash, where you're always running up against the infinite-sets problems, one is constantly having to be borrowing from the tens column.
Which reminds me of god's comment, right after he learned about Adam & Eve picking the
wrong tree to eat from. Didn't he say something to the effect of, we hafta do something about this, now that these guys have eaten from the knowledge-of-good-and-evil tree (D'oh!), we can't risk letting them also eat from the eternal-life tree OR THEY WILL BECOME LIKE _US_. Wasn't that the operative word --- "us"? Us who? The other gods [systems]?
What has an absolute entity got to offer except absolution anyway; i.e. some way out of the tangle of context. That may feel and look like forgiveness, or a moral code; but that's all it is. In one frame of mind something will look and feel like forgiveness, and
in another frame of mind look and feel like a judgement. For morality, and therefore also for law[s], we can only look to ourselves and the times-&-circumstances.
Geez, this has all gotten way too far into the abstruse fringes of Absolute Morality for a simple eel shepherd. I'm getting a headache.
If you are so convinced of the existence of a God, does it have to be the one in the bible?
If the God in the bible does not live up to even your own standards of morality, maybe he's not the real God?
There are nicer god's out there than Yahweh. :)
I would hope no one is searching for the god that meets his or her own criteria, but rather the God that is. Its not like going to a buffet and just picking what works for you that day. Also, I never said that he did not meet my criteria, I said I do not always understand Him, just like I don't understand all there is to know about the universe. Maybe there is somewhere in space where light does not behave the way it does here on earth, but that just means there is more to know. And yes, WM, I know you are not going to accept that analogy because the universe can be observed, but you have already adopted the presupposition that God is not there and that means any evidence of Him would be explained away by your atheistic framework.
I believe in Christ because what he said about life and meaning and truth and purpose meet with reality. He said that mankind is, because of our fallen state, evil, and I can look at the world around me and see, outside of the world influenced by the Christian system, that is true. He said placing others before myself is right and good, and, by practicing that I see that this produces joy and peace in my life. He said to deal with others as I would have them deal with me, and I can see, even from recent experience, that this is productive and true. He said that in order to deal with my sins and my fallen nature I have to trust in Him and follow after him, the one person who was not fallen and did not sin, and that makes sense. He said that by trusting in him, he will bring life like I have never seen before, and I can see that now. Not that everything is perfect, but that I am content in any situation because of Him.
Christ brings meaning. Everyone seeks meaning in life. Everyone desires wonder, truth, fulfillment, and peace. Christ brings all four. What could be more awesome and wonderful than the sovereign God? Who knows more about truth than the creator of the universe? Who can make life more fulfilling than the God that created you? and who can bring more peace in your life than God?
What I was saying in the last post is that I don't always get God just like I don't always get other tangible or intangible things. No, I want to believe in God as he is, not as I desire him to be, and I believe in Christ as God because he gives purpose and meaning and gives the most reasonable answers to all of the metaphysical questions that religious people ask.
I guess some would say it is stupid to look for meaning in a world that has no meaning (after all, if all is chaos, there is no meaning to anything). But, you would have to agree that there is this universal urge to know meaning and purpose. This is evidenced by all us religious idiots, from polytheistic tribes in South America to those crazy Christians, everyone(yes, I think you would have to admit that even atheists struggle with this, hince the title "Ex-Christian") is searching for that which will give life meaning. Now, would we search for meaning if there was no meaning? Why do we search for meaning? It can't just be the politics of organized religion or political systems in general, or why would remote tribes search it out. It is something more basic, more real than anything that is affected by our influences and surroundings. It is something that nags at us.
This is why I believe in God and this is why I trust in Christ.
Webmaster responds: Nathan, you have already adopted the presupposition that God is there and that you don't need any evidence of Him to justify your belief. Nathan, you have also already adopted the presupposition that Allah, Zeus, Ra, Thor and thousands of other deities worshiped and revered throughout thousands of years of human history to be mere fabrications, and all the faith of all those millions of people you disavow without a thought.
Nathan, you and I are very close in thinking. I am of the opinion that all gods are bogus. You are of the opinion that all gods, except the one you were brought up to believe in by your culture, is real.
I would gladly accept that your god is real if there was one shred of evidence in His/Her/Its favor.
I was a presuppositional Reconstructionist Christian for a number of years. That apologetic position is very weak.
Nathan, you think that your religion brings meaning to your life, but I fail to see how slavishly attending to a invisible, immaterial deity who threatens to eternally roast everyone and anyone who disbelieves in Him as providing any meaning.
Think about it: What meaning can be derived from worshiping a sadistic Bronze Age deity that can't be derived from the simple act of being alive?
My life has great meaning, and for you to suggest that my life is meaningless because I reject your religion is the height of arrogance.
Nathan, your life is meaningless because you are wasting it following nothing, preaching an empty and false lie.
There, how's it feel? Wasn't that rude? That's exactly what you just said.
I am NOT searching for meaning. I've found it. I just need more time to do all the things I want to do.
And here people thought you were actually trying to listen. But you can't listen -- you are driven by your meme to preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach.
It's annoying to read someone write the same words over and over and over and over and over and over again, isn't it? It's like a bell that won't quit ringing... like an alarm clock that won't stop buzzing... like a facet that won't stop dripping.
Show evidence that your god exists and I will believe.
There, now it's your turn to stop ejaculating about how your religion gives you the orgasmic shakes of religious ecstasy and give us some real evidence that your god exists somewhere outside your imagination.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one" — George Bernard Shaw
Funny how, no matter what the topic of the original post, whenever a Christian joins the discussion, it becomes an evangelistic campaign.
To restate the premise of the original rant: Morality is strictly a human affair.
Here's a rant I threw together for this site over three years ago on the meaning of life: The Meaning of Life.
And here's another: The Meaning of Life
You might want to read a bit more before you dive right back into preaching.
I also never said that I was not starting with presuppositions. Everyone does, there is no way not to. If you presuppose nothing, there is nowhere to start, but you already know that. I was simply pointing out that you will not hear my arguments or even consider them in some cases because you presuppose that the God whom I am trying to justify is not there.
I suppose I was arguing the existance of God from the same angle that you are aguing against him, that being philosophically. Evidence-wise, I would have to say creation would be a good place to start, but apparently you already know all my answers and have rejected them. You know, order has not been observed to come from chaos (nor does it fit logically to say that it does), design requires a designer, (stop me when you get puky), the mathmetical requirement for God, Intelligence is born of Intelligence.
Personally, my favorite is the fact that in 200 years of modern science and evolutionary theory and in 25 years of AI research, no one has been able to create anything that resembles life or intelligence, but yet we assume that all the world around us was formed from chaotic or otherwise "natural" events (reminds me of the scientific belief in spontanious generation, that organic beings born out of inorganic objects, and really evolution is just a variation of that).
Also, I would say, and you probably hate this answer most although you know it well, that God did reveal himself to us as Jesus Christ. People always ask for God to just reveal himself, but yet, when he does, they wished he had done it a different way. I think that goes back to desiring to make a god they like and that fits their molds.
I would have to say that I have adopted this position after much deliberation. Yes, I grew up in the faith, but I nearly walked away in college. I became a deist because of some of the moral conundrums that you mention. After reading C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, I reformed. I am afraid I am a terrible representative for good debaters and I use their arguments horribly.
Anyway, apparently I have worn out my welcome, so God bless you.
No, there is no evidence for a god. Now, if I was arguing for the existence of flying pink unicorns on the moons around Uranus, then I would be aruging the same as you. Oh, and BTW, those unicorns... they are responsible for creating the Earth!
The existence of the universe is evidence of the existence of the universe. That's all.
Order? You find order in a hurricane? You find order in an exploding super-nova? You find design in a downs syndrome child? You presuppose a creator, so you find places for him to fit.
Nathan preached: "You know, order has not been observed to come from chaos (nor does it fit logically to say that it does), design requires a designer, Intelligence is born of Intelligence."
The problem with your "logic" is that your presuppositions that order must be designed and that intelligence must birth intelligence is that you assume that there is a super-duper intelligent designer that was neither designed nor birthed. On the one hand you demand that everything MUST have a designer, yet you admit that SOMETHING REALLY BIG AND SMART simply exists without any reason at all.
Don't you see the contradiction? If a God can simply exist for no explainable reason, and that's supposed to make sense, then the universe existing for some so-far unexplainable reasons also makes sense. In fact, that makes more sense. In the second scenario we realize we don't know all the answers, but are committed to keep searching. In the religious scenario we simply say that God did it! No need to investigate further! We can't ever understand it! Go to church!
The genesis of the universe and life is shrouded in mystery. Guess what, the way electricity worked was shrouded in mystery less than 200 years ago. We've got a long way to go. And Christianity has held human kind back for too long already.
Just because we don't know how life began, doesn't mean GOD DID IT! The correct answer to the question is "I don't know."
I don't know is a perfectly valid answer.
Nathan, I too read C.S. Lewis and Schaeffer, and a whole lot more. 13 years ago I was in Japan winning people to the faith.
I now know my belief was silly.
Hopefully you'll come out of the fog one day too.
Peace.
Perhaps the most glaring one is The Null Hypothesis. Since this enjoys a central place in the experimental scientific method (satanic), you can readily see its fright value in, uh, certain circles. The Null Hypothesis, just for the sake of review here, is what the experimenter supposes as the the background against which she presents her own hypothesis
for why something does what it does, and by extension, the N.H. is also the principle which other experimenters, or peer-reviewers, will use (usually somewhat more vigourously than the first one, who may have developed a parental bond with her brainchild...) in trying the case that the first experimenter is laying out. The tester/reviewer of the experiment doesn't have to present an Alternative Hypothesis; she only has to say that the observed result and conclusion are fully accounted for by "that's just the way things are". Nothing _caused_ those fourteen consecutive 4's at a certain position in the decimal expansion of pi; it's just that every so often, you're just gonna run into